Federation Artillery

The
Federation simply has no artillery. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

This wasn't always the case; in the TOS episode "Arena",
Captain Kirk exchanged mortar fire with a Gorn soldier on a nearby
ridge. In the accompanying scene, we can see both the shells and the
mortar itself, which strongly resembles a real life mortar. However,
this scene was filmed at a time when Gene Roddenberry still had to
fight with the networks over the style and content of his show, and
as a result, the show always had a much more hard-edged style to it
than the politically correct TNG spin-off (the Klingons, for
example, were the brainchild of Gene Coon, not Gene Roddenberry).

Gene Roddenberry always had a problem with the military style of
TOS (as muted as it was), and we didn't get a chance to see what he
really wanted until TNG came out, with its "living room"
bridge, effeminate dress uniforms, Braun Mixmaster hand phasers, and
strident anti-military rhetoric (see "Peak Performance"
for the most egregious example). The irony here is that Gene
Roddenberry himself was a decorated war veteran, having flown the
B-17 Flying Fortress on many sorties in the Pacific conflict of WW2.
But he obviously had a problem with his own military past, as
demonstrated most graphically in the pilot episode of TNG in which
Captain Picard contemptuously referred to a 20th century American
military uniform as the "costume" relic of an uncivilized,
bygone era.

Of all the people involved with Star Trek gene over the past two
decades, the only one who really impresses me is Nicholas Meyer.
This is the man who directed both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (he also co-wrote the
screenplay for ST6). These films stand head and shoulders above the
rest of the movies, some of which descended into outright drivel,
and they both show an Enterprise whose operation is that of a
military vessel, not a damned interstellar luxury liner. It
is probably not a coincidence that both of Nicholas Meyer's films
were made in times where Gene Roddenberry's influence was on the
wane: ST2 was made after the box office failure of the
self-indulgent, slow-moving Star Trek TMP, and ST6 was made after
Mr. Roddenberry had already relinquished much of his control to
Paramount (it was actually released the year of his death).

In any case, leaving aside all the behind-the-scenes stuff, the
fact is that we would not see any sort of mortar again until the
Klingons used one, in the DS9 episode "Nor the Battle to
the Strong" (which, not surprisingly, was filmed long after
Gene Roddenberry's death). During that battle, it was notable that
no one in the entire Federation group had any mortars of their own
with which to return fire. The same weakness befell the garrison in
"The Siege of AR-588", which had no mortars or even
sustained-fire automatic weapons with which to ward off Jem'Hadar
attacks on their position.

It is tempting to argue that the Federation could simply
replicate mortars, towed guns, and any other sort of artillery
necessary if the need arises, but that's merely a knee-jerk reflex,
and an oversimplistic analysis, for the following reasons:

It assumes that replicator
patterns even exist, and there is no guarantee of that. The
fact that they keep historical records of bygone eras doesn't mean
they also have complete replicator patterns for every technological
device invented over the past 400 years. If they don't, then they
would have to re-invent those devices, and that process involves
bureaucratic consensus, government approval, design, prototyping,
testing, improvements and revisions, etc. The act of going back
over old ground isn't as simple as it would seem; some experts
within NASA have estimated that it would take well over a decade to
restore our ability to land a man on the Moon, even though we did
it way back in 1969.

It assumes that all ground units
have replicators, and that they have all the necessary raw
materials on hand, since replicators perform molecular
rearrangement rather than elemental transmutation. The
metallurgical requirements of artillery are probably quite unlike
anything they normally replicate, so even if we presume that every
ground unit has its own replicator and power source, and even if we
presume that their replicators are capable of making the chemicals
required for explosives and the metallic structures required for
the artillery pieces themselves, it is still highly unlikely that
they will have the raw materials. If they don't, then the weapons
would have to be manufactured and then distributed through
conventional means, or the appropriate raw materials would have to
be manufactured and then distributed through conventional means.
Either way, there are logistical concerns which would interfere
with the simplistic Trekkie "push a button and everyone has
mortars" mentality.

It ignores the issue of
replicator limitations, whether they relate to size or complexity.
We generally don't see large devices being replicated, with an
extreme example being the fact that they must painstakingly
assemble starships in shipyards rather than simply replicating them
at the push of a button. We also see that starships must routinely
stop at starbases in order to receive critical parts, which are
manufactured using conventional techniques and which may include
such seemingly mundane objects as a warp core hatch, which is a
simple hunk of metal. Even if every ground unit has replicators,
and raw materials, and pre-existing designs which
have been fully tested, approved, converted into replicator
patterns, and transmitted to all ground units, we still have no
guarantee that the replicators can actually produce these
weapons.

It assumes that there is no training whatsoever
required for these weapons. Real-life soldiers expend a great deal
of time and effort on the use of each type of weapon so that
they're more likely to kill the enemy than their own allies, but if
these weapons are not normally used by the Federation armed forces,
then this means they haven't received any training on their use. In
other words, the Federation would be asking soldiers to start using
an entirely new type of weapon in the heat of combat, with no
training whatsoever. What are they going to do? Hand a soldier a
PADD with some pretty diagrams and videotaped instructions, pat him
on the back, and expect him to instantly become proficient? E-mail
him the Sally Struthers ICI correspondence course on mortar use and
tactics? Hire Billy Blanks to make a videotape entitled
"Tae-Mortar-Bo: How to incorporate mortars into your workout?"

The time-honoured Trekkie defense of arguing that they can simply
replicate everything they don't already have is an empty evasion
tactic. There is no guarantee that they have pre-existing designs,
or that their replicators will be up to the job, or that they will
have the necessary raw materials on hand at every base where the
weapons are needed. Worse yet, their troops will have no training
whatsoever, and with a mortar, a lack of training strikes me as
distinctly dangerous. I may not be an experienced military
instructor but I don't think that trial by fire is the best way to
introduce a soldier to an entirely unfamiliar type of weapon.

Mortars

To the best of my knowledge, no Federation mortar has been seen
or even mentioned in the entire series runs of Star Trek TNG,
DS9, or Voyager. It's been nearly a century since a mortar was seen
in the hands of the Federation, and every single piece of ground
equipment has undergone major redesign since then. There is no
reason to assume that mortars still exist in their inventory,
particularly since we've seen several situations in which they would
have been appropriate, yet they still didn't appear. This means that
Federation soldiers are incapable of engaging ground forces without
a line of sight and a short range to target.

Even if they were able to call up old mortar designs, rapidly
produce them, and distribute them to ground units, it is highly
questionable that they would be able to use them effectively. One
does not simply guess how to use a mortar, as these weapons
are much more idiosyncratic than something like a handgun. For
example, most people are unaware that a mortar will "bed"
itself into the ground when it is fired, so that its aim point will
change with each of the first 2-4 rounds fired. After protracted
firing, it can actually take a lot of effort to remove them from the
ground, and all of this would be totally unfamiliar territory for
the Federation soldier with a new toy. Furthermore, most people are
unaware that this means there are rules as to where you can mount a
mortar; for example, it is unadvisable to place one on a rooftop
because it probably won't have the necessary strength, and that's
exactly the sort of lesson that a Federation soldier would be
learning the hard way.

Although mortars are not applicable to the Federation in its
current state, it may be useful to note the following about the
mortars that have been used by others:

The Klingon mortars in "Nor
the Battle to the Strong" scored hits 2-3 metres from Jake
Sisko, yet he wasn't wounded or even knocked down. A blast
less than a metre from Dr. Bashir knocked him down without causing
even the most superficial injury, thus suggesting that he was
actually knocked down by some sort of inner-ear problem resulting
from the shockwaves of multiple near-misses.

The Gorn mortar in "Arena" scored a hit less than
2 metres from Captain Kirk and Commander Spock. In each case, the
blast caused a knock-down but not a kill or even a wound. By
way of comparison, a fragmentation shell from the lightest modern
mortar can kill at 15 metres.

The events of "Arena" merit further examination. The
first casualty among Kirk's men vanished into thin air, as if hit by
a phaser (and of course, there was no damage at all to the rocks he
was touching). However, his disappearance coincided with the onset
of what sounded like mortar fire, not phaser fire. Moreover,
Spock complained that they had no hope of survival with their hand
phasers against the enemy's "disruptors"; a strange thing
to say when the enemy is clearly using mortars, not
disruptors. And finally, Spock located the enemy with his tricorder,
and they were more than 1300 yards away, on the other side of
intervening high ground. The intervening high ground eliminates the
possibility that the Gorns were using line-of-sight disruptors, and
it also proves once again that they were using mortars, since that
distance is too great for small-arms fire. It would therefore appear
that the Gorn troops were indeed using a mortar, and that their
mortar shells are not conventional fragmentation shells;
instead, they seem to be some sort of disruptor-based projectile,
which explodes like a tiny high-explosive charge and has a
phaser-like effect on any organics in its immediate vicinity.

Spock's conduct during this encounter was grossly
incompetent. He used his tricorder to locate the Gorns, but it
didn't occur to him that they would be able to track his active
tricorder signals! The shelling began within seconds of Spock
using his tricorder to locate them, but he still didn't make the
connection! He kept using the tricorder, and he kept drawing fire
onto their position, until his tricorder suddenly exploded from some
sort of signal feedback (probably an inadvertent side-effect of the
tracking technology they were using). At that moment, the Gorn
mortar fire immediately became much more random, with the
explosions sounds clearly being more distant. Amazingly, even after
this sequence of events, Spock made no comment about the obvious
fact that the Gorns were using his tricorder signals to aim their
mortar fire.

When they were finally able to locate a mortar of their own in
order to return fire, they fired an interesting billiard-ball shell.
This shell had a very large wide-area effect; so wide, in fact, that
they fired it without a forward observer or even a tricorder
reading, since Spock's tricorder had already been destroyed.
Instead, they fired it based on a location estimate, roughly
based on the Gorns' last known position. It detonated with a high
airburst, and it silenced the Gorn mortar with just one shot! On the
surface, this would suggest an extremely powerful weapon such
as a low-yield tactical nuclear device. However, it produced none of
the effects of a nuclear explosion. There was no shockwave. No
deafening roar. No fireball. No prompt ionizing radiation. There was
only a bright flash of light, from which the men briefly put their
arms up in order to shield their eyes. Given the lack of nuclear or
even high-yield chemical explosive effects, it is clear that this
shell was not a high explosive or nuclear weapon. Moreover,
there is no evidence that any Gorns were actually killed by
the blast; the Gorn vessel took the risk of lowering its shields in
order to beam its troops back up, which would be illogical if its
troops were all dead. It is most likely that the projectile in
question was actually some sort of electromagnetic pulse device,
designed not to cause physical damage or radiation burns but to
disable electronics (such as those in the Gorn projectile launchers,
if any, or in the disruptor projectiles themselves). It might have
even been capable of "shorting out" biochemical nervous
systems, thus causing disorientation or perhaps even unconsciousness
(although there is no way of ascertaining the validity of this
speculation). In short, it is most likely that the weapon was an
EMP grenade.

Towed Guns

No Federation towed artillery piece has been seen or even
mentioned in the entire series runs of Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, or
Voyager. It seems that an over-reliance on orbital fire support has
probably been a fixture of Federation military strategy since Kirk's
time, although that over-reliance has grown even worse in the TNG
era.

Self-propelled Guns

No Federation self-propelled artillery piece has been seen or
even mentioned in the entire series runs of Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9,
or Voyager.

Rocket Artillery

No Federation rocket launchers have been seen or even mentioned
in the entire series runs of Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, or Voyager.